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Phillip Sparkes offers some good advice about paragraphing his recent article, Thinking in Paragraphs. He explains that we see paragraphs more than we hear them. Concerning length, he states, "A good paragraph is as long as it needs to be." The requirements of unity and coherence necessarily limit length, though, and as reading habits change, "it is probably a good idea to keep paragraphs short." For more helpful advice, see the full article at page 30 of the September 2014 Kentucky Bench and Bar Magazine.

Stetson's Kirsten Davis recently published an article arguing that the traditional legal memorandum is not dead. While some lawyers may read a memo on a computer screen instead of on paper, Davis argues that on-screen reading does not change the essential nature of the objective memo, which "facilitate[s] deliberative decision making." Today's memo might include more visual cues because it may be read on a screen, but it can still encourage depth of analysis and avoid the shortcomings of more superficial forms of communication.

Professors Philip B. Stark and Richard Freishtat of Berkeley have posted a new article pointing out flaws in the use of student evaluations of professors. Among their criticisms, they point out biases in the ratings and argue that students are not qualified to evaluate such matters as instructor effectiveness. They also identify flaws with the statistical methods applied to the ratings. For example, if two students rank Professor Smith at 3 and 7 on a 10-point scale, and two other students each rank Professor Jones at 5, both professors have a 5 average. But can those averages be equated? Stark and Freishtat say no, and they argue that “averages of rating scores should not even be calculated, much less compared across instructors, courses, or departments.” Instead, other kinds of evidence should be used along with student ratings “to provide more meaningful and reliable formative and summative assessments of teaching.”

Retired U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice paid a visit today to The John Marshall Law School in Chicago, where he met with members of the Stevens Inn of Phi Delta Phi Legal Honor Society. Pictured here is Justice Stevens in the Justice Arthur Goldberg Courtroom (named for a John Marshall Law School Professor who was elevated to the U.S. Supreme Court).

Justice Stevens is being welcomed to the law school by Marie Sarantakis, Magister of the Stevens Inn Chapter of Phi Delta Phi Law Fraternity at The John Marshall Law School.

Earlier in the day, Justice Stevens spoke at a luncheon held at the Chicago Bar Association, where he responded to reviews of his latest book, Six Amendments.

Drexel University School of Law announced this week that Thomas R. Kline, a trial lawyer in Philadelphia, would give the law school $50 million to help it reach the top ranks of legal education. Drexel was established only eight years ago. Click here to read more.

The tenth edition of the Global Legal Skills Conference will be held in Chicago, Illinois on May 20-22, 2015.

GLS-10 will be co-hosted by The John Marshall Law School (where the conference originated) and Northwestern University School of Law. It will also be co-sponsored by a law school in Mexico, the Facultad Libre de Derecho de Monterrey (which twice hosted the conference in the past).

The Global Legal Skills Conference is a unique, international conference that brings together professors who teach skills, professors who teach substantive law (and especially international law), practicing attorneys, judges, and law students from around the world. At the last GLS conference (held in Verona, Italy) there were 180 participants from more than 20 countries. The conference has also been held in Costa Rica and in Washington D.C.

Professor Josephine Potuto of the University of Nebraska at Lincoln recently posted a critique of the law review editing process. After hearing the “moans and groans” of colleagues whose work has been subjected to illogical student edits and suffering through the process herself, Potuto wrote the article to “reform or at least inform student editors as they edit our work.” She criticizes student editors’ insistence on lengthy introductions and extensive footnoting. She also charges student editors with “making changes just because they can.” Potuto then presents a list of senseless editorial changes—for example, a change from “the debate roiling” to “the debate boiling.”

She concludes with a list of ten suggestions for law review editors. Among them is that editors should imagine explaining each edit in person to the author. They should make a change only if they would be willing to do that.

The U.S. Feminist Judgments Project seeks contributors of revised opinions and commentary for an edited collection entitled Feminist Judgments: Rewritten Opinions of the United States Supreme Court. This edited volume is a collaborative project among feminist law professors and others to rewrite, from a feminist perspective, key Supreme Court decisions relevant to gender issues. Editors Kathy Stanchi, Linda Berger, and Bridget Crawford seek prospective authors for 20 to 25 rewritten Supreme Court opinions covering a range of topics including reproductive rights, equal protection, the state’s use of criminal power, privacy, the family, women’s political participation, Title IX, employment discrimination and substantive due process. The editors also seek authors for commentaries of 1,500 to 2,500 words to put into context each of the rewritten cases.

The U.S. Feminist Judgments project was inspired by the successful collection and publication in Britain of Feminist Judgments: From Theory to Practice, edited by Rosemary Hunter, Clare McGlynn, and Erika Rackley. This volume, which included feminist versions of twenty-three key British decisions from the Court of Appeal and House of Lords, was published in 2010 and has been very well received. Like the sister project in Britain, the U.S. Feminist Judgments Project endeavors to pioneer “a new form of critical socio-legal scholarship” that illustrates how cases could have been decided differently had a feminist method been employed. We believe that U.S. Supreme Court law is ripe for this kind of scholarly treatment.

Those who are interested in rewriting an opinion or providing the commentary on one of the rewritten opinions must apply by September 15, 2014 at 5:00 p.m. eastern. Click here for the application.

Editors will notify accepted authors and commentators by October 7, 2014. First drafts of rewritten opinions will be due on February 1, 2015. First drafts of comments on the rewritten opinions will be due on March 15, 2015. The editors are in the process of identifying a publisher; publication of the final volume is anticipated for late 2015.

The deadline for renewing memberships in the Association of Legal Writing Directors (ALWD) is September 15th at 5:00 p.m. Register by that date to be included in the new list of members on the DIRCON listserv. The basic ALWD membership rules can be found at http://www.alwd.org/membership/). The rules include these points:

ALWD has members and delegates (members may also be delegates and vice versa), but only delegates can vote.

ALWD encourages schools to select up to two delegates for your school.

Programs with directors may have up to two member/delegates.

Programs without directors may have as many members as they have LRW faculty, but only two of those members may be designated as delegates.

NECASP has designated time for the presentation of scholarly works in progress at its December conference on Hybrid Learning and Flipped Classroom Principles. The subject of the work to be presented must be related to Law School Academic Support or Bar Study/Passage.

If you wish to present a “work in progress” the proposal process goes like this:

Submit your proposal by September 26, 2014, by email to morlen@law.wne.edu .

Proposals may be submitted as a Word document or as a PDF

Proposals must include: a. Name and title, of presenter b. Law School c. Address, Email address, and telephone number d. Title of work in progress to be presented e. Abstract of your scholarly work in progress, no more than 500 words f. Statement regarding the status of the work; i.e., whether in outline form, early draft, or near completion). g. Media or computer presentation needs.

The NECASP Board will review the proposals and reply to each by October 3, 2014.

The conference will be held in Boston in December.

Hat tip to Myra G. Orlen, Associate Professor of Legal Research and Writing and Director of Academic Success Programs at Western New England University School of Law

Touro’s Dan Subotnik and Laura Ross recently wrote about the difficulty of placing law review articles in highly-ranked law journals. Their article analyzes data from the primary journals at ten highly-ranked law schools. Among their findings: Over a recent five-year period, 93.3% of the articles in the Harvard Law Review and 80.56% of articles in the University of Chicago Law Review were written by professors at top-25 schools. And even for professors at those schools, it’s “increasingly difficult” to place articles in top-tier journals. Noting that journals often require authors to submit resumes and that the author’s home institution weighs heavily in editors’ decisions, Subotnik and Ross suggest that blind review would be fairer. They also suggest that for many deans, it’s simply unrealistic to expect faculty to publish in top-tier journals.

The U.S. Feminist Judgments Project seeks contributors of revised opinions and commentary for an edited collection entitled Feminist Judgments: Rewritten Opinions of the United States Supreme Court. This edited volume is a collaborative project among feminist law professors and others to rewrite, from a feminist perspective, key Supreme Court decisions relevant to gender issues. Editors Kathy Stanchi, Linda Berger, and Bridget Crawford seek prospective authors for 20 to 25 rewritten Supreme Court opinions covering a range of topics including reproductive rights, equal protection, the state’s use of criminal power, privacy, the family, women’s political participation, Title IX, employment discrimination and substantive due process. The editors also seek authors for commentaries of 1,500 to 2,500 words to put into context each of the rewritten cases.

The U.S. Feminist Judgments project was inspired by the successful collection and publication in Britain of Feminist Judgments: From Theory to Practice, edited by Rosemary Hunter, Clare McGlynn, and Erika Rackley. This volume, which included feminist versions of twenty-three key British decisions from the Court of Appeal and House of Lords, was published in 2010 and has been very well received. Like the sister project in Britain, the U.S. Feminist Judgments Project endeavors to pioneer “a new form of critical socio-legal scholarship” that illustrates how cases could have been decided differently had a feminist method been employed. We believe that U.S. Supreme Court law is ripe for this kind of scholarly treatment.

Those who are interested in rewriting an opinion or providing the commentary on one of the rewritten opinions must apply by September 15, 2014 at 5:00 p.m. eastern. Click here for the application.

Editors will notify accepted authors and commentators by October 7, 2014. First drafts of rewritten opinions will be due on February 1, 2015. First drafts of comments on the rewritten opinions will be due on March 15, 2015. The editors are in the process of identifying a publisher; publication of the final volume is anticipated for late 2015.

If you're going to Washington D.C. this January for the annual meeting of the Association of American Law Schools, plan an extra day to stop by the Library of Congress which will have a special exhibit on the Magna Carta.

The year 2015 will mark the 800th anniversary of the 1215 Magna Carta, the first document to limit the power of the King and to uphold the rights of the individual.

An exhibit called "Magna Carta: Muse and Mentor" will open at the Library of Congress on November 6, 2014 and continue to January 19, 2015. It features the "Lincoln Cathedral" copy of the Magna Carta, which is being loaned by Lincoln Cathedral in England (pictured here).